Germany had not taken any especial or distinguished part in the production of MSS. remarkable for artistic beauty or original treatment; but her time was to come, and now, in the use of an artistic application of the invention of printing, and the new era of book decoration and illustration, she at once took the lead. Seeing that the invention itself is ascribed to one of her own sons, it seems appropriate enough, and natural that printing should grow to quick perfection in the land of its birth; so that we find some of the earliest and greatest triumphs of the Press coming from German printers, such as Gutenberg, Fust, and Schœffer, not to speak yet of the wonderful fertility of decorative invention, graphic force, and dramatic power of German designers, culminating in the supreme genius of Albrecht Dürer and Hans Holbein.

1454 appears to be the earliest definite date that can be fixed on to mark the earliest use of printing. In that year, the Mainz "Indulgences" were in circulation, but the following year is more important, as to it is assigned the issue, from the press of Gutenberg and Fust at Mainz, of the famous Mazarin Bible, a copy of which is in the British Museum. Mr. Bullen says, "The copy which first attracted notice in modern times was discovered in the library of Cardinal Mazarin"—hence the name.

Another early printed book is the Mainz Psalter. It is printed on vellum, and comes from the press of Fust and Schœffer in 1457. It is remarkable not only as the first printed psalter and as the first book printed with a date, but also as being the first example of printing in colours. The initial letter B is the result of this method, and it affords a wonderful instance of true register. The blue of the letter fitted cleanly into the red of the surrounding ornament with a precision which puzzles our modern printers, and it is difficult to understand how such perfection could have been attained. Mr. Emery Walker has suggested to me that the blue letter itself might have been cut out, inked, and dropped in from the back of the red block when that was in the press, and so the two colours printed together. If this could be done with sufficient precision, it would certainly account for the exactitude of the register. Apart from this interesting technical question, however, the page is a very beautiful one, and the initial, with its solid shape of figured blue, inclosed in the delicate red pen-like tracery climbing up and down the margin, is a charming piece of page decoration. The original may be seen in one of the cases in the King's Library, British Museum. We have here an instance of the printer aiming at directly imitating and supplanting by his craft the art of the calligrapher and illuminator, and with such a beauty and perfection of workmanship as must have astonished them and given them far more reason to regard the printer as a dangerous rival than had (as it is said) the early wood engravers, who were unwilling to help the printer by their art for fear his craft would injure their own, which seems somewhat extraordinary considering how closely allied both wood engraver and printer have been ever since. The example of the Mainz Psalter does not seem to have been much followed, and as regards the application of colour, it was as a rule left as a matter of course to be added by the miniaturist, who evidently declined as an artist after he had got into the way of having his designs in outline provided for him ready-made by the printer; or, rather, perhaps the accomplished miniature printer, having carried his art as applied to books about as far as it would go, became absorbed as a painter of independent pictures, and the printing of books fell into inferior hands. There can be no doubt that the devices and decorations of the early printers were intended to be coloured in emulation of illuminated and miniatured MSS., and were regarded, in fact, as the pen outlines of the illuminator, only complete when filled in with colours and gold. It appears to have been only by degrees that the rich and vigorous lines of the woodcut, as well as the black and white effect, became admired for their own sake—so slowly moves the world!

A good idea of the general character of the development of the wood (and metal) cut in book and illustration and decoration in Germany, from 1470 (Leiden Christi, Pfister, Bamberg, 1470) to (Virgil Solis' Bible) 1563, may be gained from a study of the series of reproductions given in this and the preceding chapter, in chronological order, with the names, dates, and places, as well as the particular characteristics of the style of the different designers and printers.

The same may be said in regard to the Italian series which follows, and those from Basel and Paris.

Perhaps the most interesting examples of the use of early printing as a substitute for illumination and miniature are to be found in the Books of Hours which were produced at Paris in the later years of the fifteenth and the early years of the sixteenth centuries (1487-1519 about) by Vérard, Du Pré, Philip Pigouchet, Kerver, and Hardouyn.

Specimens of these books may be seen in the British Museum, and at the Art Library at South Kensington Museum. The originals are mostly printed on vellum.

The effect of the richly designed borders on black dotted grounds is very pleasant, but these books seem to have been intended to be illuminated and coloured. We find in some copies that the full-page printed pictures are coloured, being worked up as miniatures, and the semi-architectural borderings with Renaissance mouldings and details are gilded flat, and treated as the frame of the picture. There is one which has the mark of the printer Gillet Hardouyn (G. H. on the shield), on the front page. In another copy (1515) this is painted and the framework gilded; the subject is Nessus the Centaur carrying off Deianira, the wife of Hercules; a sign of the tendency to revive classical mythology which had set in, in this case, in curious association with a Christian service-book. It is noticeable how soon the facility for repetition by the press was taken advantage of, and a design, especially if on ornamental borderings of a page, often repeated several times throughout a book. These borderings and ornaments being generally in separate blocks as to headings, side panels, and tail-pieces, could easily be shifted and a certain variety obtained by being differently made up. Here we may see commercialism creeping in. Considerations of profit and economy no doubt have their effect, and mechanical invention comes in to cheapen not only labour, but artistic invention also.

It took some time, however, to turn the printer into the manufacturer or tradesman pure and simple. Nothing is more striking than the high artistic character of the early printed books. The invention of printing, coming as it did when the illuminated MSS. had reached the period of its greatest glory and perfection, with the artistic traditions of fifteen centuries poured, as it were, into its lap, filling its founts with beautiful lettering, and guiding the pencil of its designers with a still unbroken sense of fitness and perfect adaptability; while as yet the influence of the revival of classic learning and mythology was only felt as the stirring and stimulating breath of new awakening spring—the aroma of spice-laden winds from unknown shores of romance—or as the mystery and wonder of discovery, standing on the brink of a half-disclosed new world, and fired with the thought of its possibilities—

Classical mythology and Gothic mysticism and romance met together in the art and books of the early Renaissance. Ascetic aspiration strives with frank paganism and nature worship. The gods of ancient Greece and Rome seemed to awake after an enchanted sleep of ages, and reappear again unto men.

Italy, having hardly herself ever broken with the ancient traditions of Classical art and religion, became the focus of the new light, and her independent republics, such as Florence and Venice, the centres of wealth, culture, refinement, and artistic invention. Turkish conquest, too, had its effect on the development of the new movement by driving Greek scholars and the knowledge of the classical writers of antiquity Westward. These were all materials for an exceptional development of art, and, above all, of the art of the printer, and the decoration and illustration of books.

My illustrations are taken from the copy in the Art Library at South Kensington Museum, and are from negatives taken by Mr. Griggs, for the Science and Art Department, who have issued a set of reproductions in photo-lithography, by him, of the whole of the woodcuts in the volume, of the original size, at the price, I believe, of 5s. 6d. Here is an instance of what photographic reproduction can do for us—when originals of great works are costly or unattainable we can get reproductions for a few shillings, for all practical purposes as good for study as the originals themselves. If we cannot, in this age, produce great originals, we can at least reproduce them—perhaps the next best thing.

There is a French edition of Poliphilus printed at Paris, by Kerver, in 1561,[2] which has a frontispiece designed by Jean Cousin. The illustrations, too, have all been redrawn, and are treated in quite a different manner from the Venetian originals—but they have a character of their own, though of a later, florid, and more self-conscious type, as might be expected from Paris in the latter half of the sixteenth century. The initial letters of a series of chapters in the book spell, if read consecutively, Francisco Columna (F.R.A.N.C.I.S.C.O. C.O.L.V.M.N.A.)—the name of the writer of the romance.

Whether such designs as these were intended to be coloured is doubtful. They are very satisfactory as they are in outline, and want nothing else. The book may be considered as an illustrated one, drawings of monuments, fountains, standards, emblems, and devices are placed here and there in the text, but they are so charmingly designed and drawn that the effect is decorative, and being in open line the mechanical conditions are perfectly fulfilled of surface printing with the type.

The noble designs of the master craftsman of Nuremberg, Albrecht Dürer, are well known. His extraordinary vigour of drawing, and sense of its resources as applied to the woodcut, made him a great force in the decoration and illustration of books, and many are the splendid designs from his hand. Three designs from the fine series of the Little Passion and two of his title pages are given, which show him on the strictly decorative side. The title dated 1523 may be compared with that of Oronce Finé (Paris, 1534). There appears to have been a return to this convoluted knotted kind of ornament at this period. It appears in Italian MSS. earlier, and may have been derived from Byzantine sources.

There is a fine title page designed by Holbein, printed by Petri, at Basle, in 1524. It was originally designed and used for an edition of the New Testament, printed by the same Adam Petri in 1523. At the four corners are the symbols of the Evangelists; the arms of the city of Basle are in the centre of the upper border, and the printer's device occupies a corresponding space below. Figures of SS. Peter and Paul are in the niches at each side. But the work always most associated with the name of Holbein is the remarkable little book containing the series of designs known as the "Dance of Death," the first edition of which was printed at Lyons in 1538. The two designs here given are printed from the blocks cut by Bonner and Byfield (1833). These cuts are only about 2-1/2 by 2 inches, and yet an extraordinary amount of invention, graphic power, dramatic and tragic force, and grim and satiric humour, is compressed into them. They stand quite alone in the history of art, and give a wonderfully interesting and complete series of illustrations of the life of the sixteenth century. Holbein is supposed to have painted this "Dance of Death" in the palace of Henry VIII., erected by Cardinal Wolsey at Whitehall, life size; but this was destroyed in the fire which consumed nearly the whole of that palace in 1697.

The Bible cuts of Hans Holbein are also a very fine series, and remarkable for their breadth and simplicity of line, as well as decorative effect on the page.

It is interesting to note that Holbein's father and grandfather both practised engraving and painting at Augsburg, while his brother Ambrose was also a fertile book illustrator. Hans Holbein the elder married a daughter of the elder Burgmair, father of the famous Hans Burgmair, examples of whose fine and vigorous style of drawing are given.

Albrecht Dürer and Holbein, indeed, seem to express and to sum up all the vigour and power of design of that very vigorous and fruitful time of the German Renaissance. They had able contemporaries, of course, among whom are distinguished, Lucas Cranach (the elder) born 1470, and Hans Burgmair, already named, who was associated with Dürer in the work of the celebrated series of woodcuts, "The Triumphs of Maximilian;" one of the fine series of "Der Weiss König," a noble title page, and a vigorous drawing of peasants at work in a field, here represent him. THE GERMAN TRADITION.Other notable designers were Hans Sebald Beham, Hans Baldung Grün, Hans Wächtlin, Jost Amman, and others, who carried on the German style or tradition in design to the end of the sixteenth century. This tradition of convention was technically really the mode of expression best fitted to the conditions of the woodcut and the press, under which were evolved the vigorous pen line characteristic of the German masters. It was a living condition in which each could work freely, bringing in his own fresh observation and individual feeling, while remaining in collective harmony.

The various marks adopted by the printers themselves are often decorative devices of great interest and beauty. The French printers, Gillett Hardouyn and Thielman Kerver, for instance, had charming devices with which they generally occupied the front page of their Books of Hours. Others were pictorial puns and embodied the name of the printer under some figure, such as that of Petri of Basle, who adopted a device of a stone, which the flames and the hammer stroke failed to destroy; or the mark of Philip le Noir—a black shield with a negro crest and supporter; or the palm tree of Palma Isingrin. EMBLEM BOOKS.Others were purely emblematic and heraldic, such as the dolphin twined round the anchor, of Aldus, with the motto "Propera tarde"—"hasten slowly." This, and another device of a crab holding a butterfly by its wings, with the same signification, are both borrowed from the favourite devices of two of the early emperors of Rome—Augustus and Titus. This symbolic, emblematic, allegorizing tendency which had been more or less characteristic of both art and literature, in various degrees, from the most ancient times, became more systematically cultivated, and collections of emblems began to appear in book form in the sixteenth century. The earliest being that of Alciati, the first edition of whose book appeared in 1522, edition after edition following each other from various printers and places from that date to 1621, with ever-increasing additions, and being translated into French, German, and Italian. Mr. Henry Green, the author of "Shakespeare and the Emblem Writers" (written to prove Shakespeare's acquaintance with the emblem books, and constant allusions to emblems), said of Alciati's book that "it established, if it did not introduce, a new style for emblem literature—the classical, in the place of the simply grotesque and humorous, or of the heraldic and mystic."